Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, a new list from therichest.com has ranked the world’s top ten architects in terms of their total net worth. Big A architecture remunerates extraordinarily well for some, with the total list’s net worth nearing three-quarters of a billion... View full entry
Vancouver-based developer Westbank has unveiled plans for a collection of mixed-use projects in downtown San Jose, California. The development will feature six new or renovated buildings by leading architects including Kengo Kuma and Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Studio Gang, James K.M... View full entry
Miami’s newest wave of designs could be its most ambitious yet.
Fitting for a place that cherishes A-listers, virtually every celebrity architect in the world, and many rising stars, have built there in the last decade. The big names include Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & De Meuron, Grimshaw, César Pelli, Richard Meier, Arquitectonica, Rafael Moneo, Jean Nouvel and Bjarke Ingels. The impressive results are scattered citywide, from Miami Beach to the thriving Design District.
— The New York Times
Sam Lubell takes a stroll from Downtown Miami to the Design District to Miami Beach for a NYT roundup of (fairly) recent additions to the city's impressive portfolio of landmark buildings by noteworthy architects, including Herzog & de Meuron's 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage, OMA's Faena Forum... View full entry
Rafael Viñoly is best known for designing 432 Park, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, but he makes time for private homes, too–at least when they have headline-making features like a bullet-proof glass facade. His firm was first tapped to design this Upper East Side townhouse by Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian to serve as his home and U.S. headquarters, but it looks like he instead decided to list the finished product for $50 million. — 6sqft
What if buying a house were more like buying a car? Could the process of choosing between a Ford, Volkswagen or Nissan ever translate into picking between an Adjaye, Rogers or Assemble? Beyond the dream of ever being able to buy a house, the prospect of commissioning an architect-designed home is an impossibly remote prospect for most of us, a luxury confined to the glossy pages of Sunday supplements and Grand Designs. — The Guardian
The founders of Cube Haus have commissioned well known architects such as Adjaye Associates, Skene Catling de la Peña, and Carl Turner Architects to design modular homes at affordable prices. Targeting infill and backland sites in the London area, Cube Haus is looking to fill a small housing... View full entry
When it opens in 2019, the building is expected to be one of the tallest in the neighborhood. Views from the skyscraper include the Statue of Liberty, the Woolworth Building, City Hall Park and the East River. The condos will range from $630,000 studios to $4.7 million four-bedrooms. — 6sqft
Three years ago, starchitect David Adjaye completed his first project in NYC, an affordable housing complex in Harlem called the Sugar Hill Development. Now that he's garnered international fame for his National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC, Adjaye is coming back to the... View full entry
From egg-shaped concert halls to skyscrapers reminiscent of big pairs of pants, China’s top cities are famously full of curious monuments to architectural ambition. But as land prices in the main metropolises have shot into the stratosphere, developers have been scrambling to buy up plots in the country’s second and third-tier cities, spawning a new generation of delirious plans in the provinces. — The Guardian
"From Harbin “City of Music” to Dezhou “Solar Valley”, provincial capitals are branding themselves as themed enclaves of culture and industry to attract inward investment, and commissioning scores of bold buildings to match." View full entry
This topical review of 2016's News isn't about certain architects' big projects or prizes (those'll have their own lists), but about the culture surrounding those big names, and the way their personalities convey the profession to a wider audience. For your reading pleasure, presented in reverse... View full entry
As native Chicagoans, it’s not surprising that our family was keenly aware of architecture [...] While the architecture of Chicago made us cognizant of the art of architecture, our work with designing and building hotels made us aware of the impact architecture could have on human behavior. So in 1978, when we were approached with the idea of honoring living architects, we were responsive. — Thomas J. Pritzker — Forbes
A brief history on the family behind "the architecture profession's highest honor", and how the prize was established.For more, check out Archinect's most recent coverage on the Pritzker Prize:Why is the Pritzker such a big deal?Aravena's Pritzker: A Critical Round-Up"Making A Pritzker Laureate"... View full entry
The rise of international architecture competitions has given western architects an opportunity to make their mark on eastern Europe and Central Asia [...]
Regardless of record-high fees, some of their projects are being cancelled half-way through or take a good decade to build. But the ones that are brought to life often become some of the most recognised works of its authors. For starchitects the miles between eastern Europe and Central Asia is the place where dreams and ambitions come true.
— calvertjournal.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Azerbaijan counts human cost of architectureZaha's Baku win ignites protests over forced eviction and suspicions over worker's rights and human traffickingWho’s Winning the Architecture Arms Race?In Kazakhstan, a Shimmering Skyline on the Steppe View full entry
The latest explosion of Manhattan development has fully and passionately embraced the phenomenon of the global starchitect. [...]
As it turned out, the future would be pure real estate ... The future was the privatisation of the sky and a transfer from corporate power to individual wealth, the visual manifestation of the 0.1 per cent. It was a catwalk of anorexic skinnyscrapers by the equivalents of haute-couture designers ... global names with which to sell real estate.
— ft.com
“a barbershop, a beautiful barbershop formed by curves of alabaster stone. It would resemble an albino slug that’s eating a pile of white towels. Instead of sitting on swivel chairs during your haircut, you’d rest on a big egg that rises out of an indoor reflecting pool. [...]
Every day, I open the phone book and call a handful of random barbershops to see if anyone is interested, but I have yet to find a barber with the vision and bravery required.” – Zaha Hadid
— clickhole.com
I had dreamed of the day when the visionary and hysterical ClickHole would lampoon starchitects. Now that day has come, and the resulting listicle does not disappoint.Here's Frank Gehry's lost project for the "Evil Concert Hall":"Instead of holding music, the evil hall would just house endless... View full entry
The Van Alen Institute and online auction platform Paddle8 recently opened up their 2015 Auction of Art + Design Experiences that lets eager (and wealthy) bidders opt for basically hanging out with some of today's famous architects and designers.This year's auction boasts an international list of... View full entry
Earlier today, Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects posted a nearly 1,400 word polemic on Facebook denouncing contemporary architecture criticism and defending the “star-system” that has been instrumental in his firm’s success in the last few decades. Instead of “seeing conspicuity... View full entry
Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...].
“It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming.
— theguardian.com
